In memoriam of Nicolas, a plaque, a monument

 

A Bastille Day Tribute to Nicolas Peltier
 

July fourteenth will forever be a memorable date for me. Along with my wife Dorothy, our youngest son Chris and our three-year-old grandson Nathan, it was on this day that I recently attended the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to our ancestor Nicolas Peltier, which took place in the hamlet of Germonval, part of the commune of Gallardon, France. Also present at the dedication ceremony that day were “not-too-distant cousin” Benoit Pelletier-Shoja, from Nashua, New Hampshire, and “long lost cousin” Jacques Pelletier, 81, a native of Gallardon now living in nearby Chartres. Also in attendance were Pascal Pelletier and his spouse Lise Lapointe, from Saint-Amable, Quebec; although not directly descended from Nicolas Peltier, they were there representing the Association des familles Pelletier Inc.

The day began with a pre-ceremony gathering in front of Gallardon’s town hall, at the Place du Jeu de Paume. Present were the mayor of Gallardon, Mr. Guy Beaufils, Ms. Florine Perry, who had organized the day’s program of events, as well as various other Pelletier and Peltier cousins. I was pleasantly surprised by the display of American and Canadian flags waving along with the French and European Union flags that stood out from the second story of City Hall. After a quick headcount, our festive group proceeded to Germonval, where the dedication ceremony began promptly at 11 o’clock. Before a crowd of some thirty or forty people, including local journalists from two local newspapers, Mayor Beaufils, Pascal Pelletier, Benoit Pelletier-Shoja and I each made a brief speech before being joined by my son Chris and grandson Nathan for the actual unveiling of the plaque, which had been draped by a French flag all this time. On the count of three, we six pulled it away, revealing a beautiful marble plaque etched with golden lettering. Here is an English translation of the French inscription:

This plaque is located in Germonval, Gallardon, France N48 31.822 E1 42.242

It was here in Germonval that Nicolas Pelletier was born September 2, 1594. Having left one day in the year 1636 to conquer “the new world,” he co-founded several large cities in Canada and America.

After this, Ms. Perry invited everyone to continue on to the Gallardon city park for a reception that included champagne, fruit juices, and other refreshments. Gifts of appreciation were exchanged all around, between Mr. Beaufils, Ms. Perry and her fiancé Éric Blaise, Pascal and Lise, Benoit, and Dorothy, Chris and myself.

Following this reception was an invitation-only luncheon at a local restaurant and crêperie called the Entr’Acte Café. How could you go wrong with succulent confit de canard (duck conserve), ample bottles of Loire wine, fresh fruit, and fresh crêpes for dessert! It was magnificent!

After lunch, local historian Maurice Vié led everyone on a walking tour through the narrow, winding streets of Gallardon, pointing out and explaining several historically significant sites. Three main points of interest were the ruins of an early twelfth-century tower partially destroyed in 1421, a carved-façade timber-frame house constructed in the sixteenth century, and last but not least, St. Peter and St. Paul Church, which was begun in the 11th century and finally completed in the 16th century. Some of us “brave souls” in the group even climbed to the top of the church’s bell tower, where we saw the many exposed timber frames that support the roof, and we carefully walked along the beams holding up the ceiling of the sanctuary. This part of the church now serves as a large aviary for the pigeons that fly in and out through holes in the fenced windows.

After our visit to the church and the tower, the group proceeded to the local tourism bureau, which houses a small but impressive collection of prehistoric tools and pottery discovered in and around the Gallardon.

At this point it had already been an intense morning and afternoon, so we all decided to take a break and return to our respective lodgings before regrouping at the park later that evening for the outdoor dinner; you could call it a picnic, but it was closer to a feast. It was, after all, Bastille Day. The friendly atmosphere of the meal lent itself to relaxed conversation with our many tablemates. For the benefit of our French hosts, friends and cousins, Benoit even got out his pen and traced – literally, on our paper tablecloth – the life and migrations of Nicolas Peltier and his family in New France.

Before we knew it, it was 11 p.m. and time for the fireworks. Several hundred people were already swarming in and around the parking lot, and more were on their way, while we were escorted inside the fence to our “VIP seating,” front and center for the synchronized music and firework display, which was not-so-coincidently entitled “The Conquest of the New World.” It was an impressive program, and a fitting end to an impressive day!

This was a memorable trip from beginning to end. We were received like friends and treated like family, and perhaps the most enduring aspect of our voyage is this friendship which we have forged with the people of Gallardon. We are already looking forward to our next visit!

William H. Peltier of Watkinsville, Georgia
with Benoit Pelletier-Shoja of Nashua, New Hampshire

Sillery on September 12, 2005

IN MEMORY OF Nicolas Peltier AND Jeanne de Vousy THE FIRST PELLETIER FAMILY TO SETTLE IN NEW FRANCE. Originally from the Parish of Saint-Pierre Saint Paul of Gallardon in Beauce (France), they arrived in this country on June 11, 1636, accompanied by their sons Jean and François. Living first at the Habitation of Québec City, they settled on the côte Saint-François-Xavier in Sillery about 1645. Governor Charles Huault de Montmagny granted to master-carpenter Nicolas Peltier 50 acres of land on September 12, 1645. Father Jean de Quen, Superior of the Company of Jesus in New France, granted him another 50 acres in May 1659. This monument rests on a part of the lands bestowed upon the Peltier family. The Pelletier Family Association, Inc. September 12, 2005.

On 12 September 2005, the Pelletier Family Association, Inc. dedicated a monument on a part of the land granted to Nicolas Peltier in 1645. This monument is located at the maison Hamel-Bruneau, 2608, ch. St-Louis. Sillery (Quebec) N 46.46.005 W071.16.376

As part of the dedication ceremony, Benoît Pelletier Shoja, one of Nicolas Peltier's descendants and avid Peltier family researcher, gave a talk on the research he recently made in France.

" Mr. President and members of the Sainte-Foy/Sillery Administrative Council; Mr. Dumas, Ms. Blais-Gosselin; members of the Pelletier Family Association; cousins; friends; guests: A great emotion fills my heart as I look upon this monument honoring these hardy Québé-cois pioneers, our ancestors Nicolas Peltier and Jeanne de Vousy. In the name of their descendants throughout the world, I salute you. I thank you with all my heart for this celebration of the lives of our forbears. This monument, which sits on a portion of the land con-ceded to this family 360 years ago today, will serve as a reminder to all those who see it that they are standing in the very cradle of the Peltier family in North America. Despite the gap between their lives and my own - four centuries and eleven generations - I am forever aware of the extraordinary life of this couple. One spring day in the year 1636, Nicolas and Jeanne undertook a voyage of great uncertainty across a vast ocean, to realize their ambitions in the hostile and unforgiving territory of New France, where they eventually succeeded in establishing their family. Between 1633 and 1649 they had eight children, each of whom reached adulthood. In 1681, their progeny included three sons, five daughters, over seventy grandchildren and even several great-grandchildren; fifty years later it was nearly a thousand descendants. The Peltier family was at that time the tenth largest Québécois "root family," which is no small claim. As for Nicolas, he lived to about the age of eighty-one, which is, without exaggeration, extraordinary for the time. His line has perpetuated and his descendants continue to prosper, as much in Canada as in the United States, as well as throughout the world.

To conclude this first part of my presentation, many thanks once again to the Administrative Council of Sainte-Foy/Sillery for having authorized the installation of this monument here at this glorious site, the Hamel-Bruneau House, on the land that once belonged to Nicolas Peltier. Thanks also to all those who helped make this extraordinary day possible, in particular Denis Pelletier, Guy R. Pelletier and Marcel Pelletier, of the Pelletier Family Association, and Éric Dumas, director of historical facilities for Sainte-Foy/Sillery.

I would now like to speak to you about the week in July 2005 that I spent at the Eure-et-Loir Departmental Archives, situated in Chartres, France, in pursuit of Nicolas Peltier. I would also like to present the results of my research there.

First, in order to undertake this task, I based myself uniquely upon what was already known about the origins of this ancestor, according to the archives of New France. The parish register of Notre-Dame de Québec reveals that master-carpenter Nicolas Peltier was originally from the parish of Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul de Gallardon in Beauce. The census of 1667 indicates that he was born about 1590. And, very important, different notarial contracts prove that he could sign his name.

Conversely, neither his parents' names nor his date of birth appear in documents available at the National Archives of Québec; no genealogist has ever known these two pieces of important information.

In addition, once at the Eure-et-Loir Archives, I limited my research to the registers of notaries active in Gallardon in the early seventeenth century. Given the enormous amount of documents that this research entailed, I could not read each contract line by line. Instead, I paid close attention to the signatures at the end of each instrument, careful not to miss my ancestor's scrawled endorsement.

On my first day at the Archives, Monday, July 18, I consulted six volumes of bound notarial contracts; each register contained about 400 or 500 pages. To my great disappointment, although different Pelletier signatures abounded in these registers, I found no trace of Nicolas Peltier. The next day, during eight consecutive hours of research, I consulted thirteen such registers, page by page. Again, I encountered many Pelletier signatures, but not the one I had come to find.

The morning of Wednesday, July 20, the director of the Eure-et-Loir Archives, Michel Thibault, whom I had contacted before visiting France, gave me a personal guided tour of the archives facility. The building is a former seminary, constructed in 1722, and has served as an archival repository for the last century. Mr. Thibault admitted that this was perhaps the worst possible environment in which to effectively conserve the documents in his care. Consequently, the archives are now in the process of being moved to a new state-of-the-art facility. Now, because I am employed at the New Hampshire State Archives, Mr. Thibault received me as a colleague, hence the guided tour. In addition, he also gave me access to several one-of-a-kind documents from the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, which no long circulate publicly, as well as different medieval maps of Gallardon and its environs.

After this warm welcome and splendid visit, during which I was able to meet and talk with different French colleagues, that afternoon I returned to leafing through the registers of seventeenth-century Gallardonian notaries. At the end of my third day I had already consulted thirty separate notarial registers; at a conservative estimate this is over 10,000 individual notarial contracts, ranging in dates from 1606 to 1630. With only two days remaining at the Archives, I still had not found any trace of Nicolas Peltier.

All the same, I had very good reason to be happy. At the beginning of the year, in preparation for my visit to France, I had written Mr. Thibault to ask him about the Eure-et-Loir Archives. In one response he indicated that it was possible to consult digitized microfilmed copies of the état civil (vital records) of every commune in the department, including Gallardon, up to 1853. Because I was planning to spend only one week at the Archives and wanted to restrict my research to original notarial registers, I ventured asking Mr. Thibault if it would be possible to purchase a CD-ROM of Gallardon's earliest parish records. To my great joy he said yes; because I had traveled some 5,000 kilometers to reach Chartres, there was no problem. Imagine my great surprise when he added, "But I have no right to make you pay"!

So, that day Mr. Thibault offered me not one, but three CD-ROMs containing over 1,720 images of Gallardon's parish registers, from 1578 to 1670! What a magnificent finish to my third day at the Archives.

Now, after three days of disappointing research in the notarial registers, when I opened my first volume of contracts early Thursday morning, July 21, little did I know what I was going to find in my first registry of the day - a registry that I had not planned to consult, because the archives index indicated "mauvais état" (bad condition).

There, in the minutes of a notary name Jean Fullone, for the year 1612, at the end of a contract dated February 29, I encountered, finally, the signature of Nicolas Peltier!

Reading for a first time the text of this contract which my ancestor had signed, I realized that this document was very important - indeed invaluable - for several reasons. First, it bears our ancestor's signature, which permits us to prove irrefutably and therefore definitively that this is indeed Québécois pioneer Nicolas Peltier.

Moreover, it reinforces what we already knew about Nicolas, namely that he came from the parish of Gallardon.

But what sort of contract was this?

Among other words, I thought I could distinguish "baille" (third-person singular present-tense form of "to lease") which immediately made me think that Nicolas was agreeing to rent property. But I did not see any other words typically used in leases or land sale agreements.

Only later, with help from Mr. Thibault, did I learn that I had in actual fact found an appren-ticeship contract. That is to say, young Nicolas was being leased as an apprentice and student to a master carpenter, who in turn agreed to instruct him in the art of carpentry, which trade Nicolas would later continue in New France.

This master carpenter was named Michel Delaval, and the contract bears not only his sig-nature, but also his mark. Beneath his signature he traced the outline of a broadaxe, the indispensable tool of a carpenter for hewing posts and beams. This identifying mark would have also likely appeared on any framework or other timber structure he had constructed.

In addition, the contract shows that Delaval lived in Épernon, a town situated ten kilometers from Gallardon, where he would have quite probably brought Nicolas during his apprenticeship. This constitutes the first indication of the early migrations of our ancestor before his arrival in Québec.

All the same, the ultimate reason that this document is so precious to us is that it bears the names of Nicolas Peltier's parents! This would later serve as the key to opening my re-search in the parish registers of Gallardon.

Now, having uncovered this contract that morning, it was not until five o'clock that afternoon that I was able to meet with Mr. Thibault to continue reading the text, and to confirm my limited interpretation thereof. He eventually invited colleague Brigitte Féret, and we three together were able to decipher a large part of the document. However, given the advanced hour, we decided to put the contract aside until the next afternoon, as Mr. Thibault would be absent that morning.

The next day I spent my time carefully studying, deciphering and transcribing the text. Although about twenty words remained illegible, mostly in the conventional notarial closing, with what we had been able to decipher the previous day, I was able to grasp the principle elements: Nicolas' father having died sometime earlier, our young ancestor was unable to continue the paternal trade. His mother, likely unable to provide for her son, had to lease him to Michel Delaval, and this, during four years. Delaval accepted to "teach, show and instruct" Nicolas "his said condition of carpenter"… to "provide and ready his drink [and] food" … to "provide heat"… and to "maintain clothing, linens and shoes," all at his own expense. In return, Nicolas would be "required to serve the said Delaval his master in his said condition and in all other licit and honest affaires that he will be commanded without distrusting or elsewhere serving […] during the said time"…

This is the interpretation ultimately arrived at by Mr. Thibault, Mrs. Féret and myself, with additional help from Émilie Lebailly, on Friday afternoon, July 22.

Now, this story - and my research - obviously does not end in France. Remember the three CD-ROMs that Mr. Thibault had graciously given me! Once I returned home, armed with Nicolas' parents' names, I set myself to "thumbing through" the oldest Gallardon registers.

In the second register, which begins in 1591, I found not one, but three of Nicolas' sisters - and older sisters at that. Nicolas was the fourth child and the first son of his family. His parents ultimately had thirteen children, which is to say nine daughters and four sons, between 1592 and 1610. I cannot however at this time confirm how many of these children survived to adulthood.

The family's first child was baptized on November 16, 1582. Her name was Simone, which happens to also be her mother's name.

Next was Philippe, on October 18, 1593; and then Jeanne, on April 3, 1595.

Then, on June 4, 1596, it was Nicolas, sponsored by Nicolas Brebier, Éloi Pelletier and Mathurine Moinaut, wife of Pasquier Pichereau, who was himself a relative of the child's mother.

After Nicolas there was Marie, baptized March 11, 1598; and on February 10, 1599, a second daughter named Marie.

On July 11, 1600, another daughter named Jeanne was baptized, and on January 23, 1602, it was second son Éloi.

On November 18, 1603, it was the family's ninth child and its third son, Pierre, sponsored by Pierre Beauchesne, Nicolas Pelletier , son of Éloi Pelletier, and Jeanne, wife of Claude Duboys. Now, it is possible, although in no way certain, that this Pierre is the unidentified Pierre Pelletier named in the contract drafted in Québec City on November 12, 1639, by notary Martial Piraube, in which Nicolas Peltier and Pierre Pelletier, both carpenters, and mason Jean Éger report on the condition of the house of the late Guillaume Hébert.

Later came Nathalie, on April 10, 1605; Marguerite, on November 10, 1606; the family's last son, Philippe, on February 22, 1609; and finally, its last child, Simone, on June 13, 1610.

In summation, much heretofore unknown information about the origins and family of Québécois pioneer Nicolas Peltier has been brought to light. We know that he had nine sisters and three brothers, as well as the name and baptism date of each sibling. We know at long last when Nicolas himself was baptized. We also know his mother's name and even the name of the master carpenter who instructed him in the art of carpentry. So now, finally, I can unveil the last piece of information that I have to reveal, the name of Nicolas' father: François Pelletier.

I thank you all for your presence here this magnificent afternoon, and I thank you for your attention. Thank you very much."

Benoit Pelletier Shoja,
e-mail : LaFranceLaPerse@gmail.com
September 12, 2005

To learn about Benoit's finding in France, please click HERE.
 

©Association des Familles Pelletier Inc.